Great Nicobar, India

Great Nicobar: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Great Nicobar is the southernmost and largest of the Nicobar Islands, forming part of India's union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Situated north of Sumatra, it lies at a considerable geographic remove from the Indian mainland, making submarine cable connectivity particularly significant for the island's communications infrastructure. One submarine cable lands at Great Nicobar, connecting this remote island to India's national network.

The single cable serving Great Nicobar is the Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Islands Cable (CANI), an intra-national system that links this island territory with the Indian mainland. The connection it provides represents the kind of domestic inter-island corridor that underpins reliable communications for remote island communities within the same national jurisdiction.

Cables Landing at Great Nicobar

The Chennai-Andaman & Nicobar Islands Cable (CANI) is a 2,300 km submarine cable system that reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2020, with a draft designation. The cable connects Great Nicobar and other points within the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Indian mainland. As both endpoints fall within India, CANI functions as a domestic cable system, serving the connectivity needs of India's island territories in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

Regional Context

Within India's submarine cable landscape — which spans 21 cables across 26 landing points — Great Nicobar hosts a single cable, placing it among the country's smaller landing points by cable count. It is comparable in this regard to fellow single-cable landing points such as Agatti, Amini, and Andrott, and stands at a distance from major Indian hubs like Mumbai, with 18 cables, and Chennai, with 9. Great Nicobar's ranking places it in the top 88 percent of Indian landing points by cable count, reflecting the relatively limited but present submarine cable infrastructure across India's island territories.

Network Role

Great Nicobar functions as a single-cable terminus rather than a multi-cable hub, served exclusively by the CANI system. This domestic cable provides the island's link to the Indian mainland, enabling communications between one of India's most geographically isolated territories and the broader national network. The cable's 2,300 km length reflects the substantial sea distance between the Nicobar Islands and mainland India.

Within the regional submarine cable graph, Great Nicobar's role is that of a terminal node on a domestic intra-island system. Its presence as a named landing point underlines the geographic extent of India's effort to extend submarine cable connectivity to its most distant island territories in the eastern Indian Ocean region.